Archive for the ‘event marketing’ tag

“The New York City-based Dentsu Aegis-owned agency is pumping up support of work-life balance in its offices with a new employee-targeted program called Get A Life. Staffers are given $500 to spend on their own personal development—whether it be surf lessons, a gym membership or an academic course or class. The agency “feels that supporting our folks outside the office and encouraging them to try new things is imperative.” Beefing up its b-to-b offerings as b-to-c clients have asked for some of MKTG’s “special sauce” to plus-up their business events.”

Thanks to everyone at MKTG, our amazing clients and partners for helping make this happen. #MyMKTG

The NHL CentennialFanArena, the league’s in-market activation around its 100th season, has proved to be an effective fan engagement tool for both the league and teams, leading to the hope of doing something nationally on a smaller scale in future years.

Launched Jan. 1 in Toronto at the Centennial Classic, the traveling tour has stopped in 16 team cities thus far, logging more than 33,000 miles. More than 200,000 fans have attended, according to the NHL. It will visit the remaining teams by the end of this year, as well as the league’s tentpole events, including the draft and outdoor games.

“Our goal was to figure out how we were going to reach out and touch fans during the centennial year, and we’ve seen how each of these cities have embraced it,” said Steve Mayer, NHL executive vice president and chief content officer. “We knew we were producing a lot of good content during the centennial, and wanted to make it as far-reaching as possible, even to the point where it was in your backyard.”

The fanarena, which consists of two 53-foot trucks and was created alongside MKTG and Palmer Audio, includes several elements for fans such as a ball hockey rink, a virtual reality Zamboni experience and a 1,000-square-foot museum display of memorabilia, photos and interactive displays.

Designed to provide fans with a historical look at the sport along with interactive games, the tour has built upon what many teams have begun doing across the league.

For example, the Arizona Coyotes launched their own mobile tour event in December 2015 that included an interactive slap shot game and player features. It travels to festivals, schools and other events around its metro area.

When the league’s truck tour was scheduled to come to the city for two days in early January, it secured a spot at a popular outdoor shopping center where it also held a viewing party for an away game. More than 14,000 people attended in Tempe, with the Coyotes able to sell “numerous” flex packs, mini-packs and single-game tickets, said Rich Nairn, executive vice president of communications and broadcasting.

While the Nashville Predators have an outdoor activation in a plaza outside their stadium for most home games, the chance to bring elements of hockey history to the city as part of the NHL tour was key for a city that has been in the league for fewer than 20 years.

“For many fans in markets like Nashville, they may never get to the Hockey Hall of Fame [in Toronto],” said Gerry Helper, Predators senior vice president and senior adviser. “To be able to bring even a small versionof something that features the game’s traditions, its changes and history really helps to grow the appreciationof the sport, the league and our team here.”

The NHL has nine of its sponsors — including Bridgestone, Dunkin’ Donuts and SAP — supporting the tour, and has encouraged teams to have their own sponsors activate alongside the events. In Nashville, Dunkin’ is also a local sponsor and handed out free coffee and doughnuts, and the Tennessee Lottery also activated alongside the two-day event. Mayer said the league is working with all the teams along the tour to optimize the stop as best as they can, both for sponsors and fans.

Mayer said based off the feedback he has received during the planning of the truck tour, he expects all the league’s teams to plan their own in-market tours. He said the league is also aiming to be involved as well, even if it’s just ensuring the most popular element of the current tour is there — the Stanley Cup.

“We’re still trying to figure out how we’re going to do that, but it’s really opened up our eyes in a great way,” Mayer said. One of the factors will be on how much money the league allocates to those efforts.

The NHL declined to comment on the cost of the truck tour. The tour is free to all fans.

SOURCE: By Ian Thomas, Staff Writer Published in SportsBusiness Journal on May 15, 2017

For the past month, the San Francisco office has been working with Adopt a Family as part of our annual winter corporate social responsibility event. Adopt a Family is a non-profit organization that pairs families in need with donors (like us!) and the donors follow a wishlist and shop for holiday gifts for the families.

We received two families to support so we split the West Coast team (this included everyone in LA and our gals currently working in NY) up. We arranged as a little friendly competition and the teams signed up for items and shopped. Earlier this week, we gathered all of the gifts in San Fran and spent much of the day gift wrapping and getting everything ready to hand over to these amazing families. Take a look!

We are so thrilled to be celebrating a hugely successful launch of the Gatorade Fuel Lab with our awesome client, Gatorade, this past week at SXSW, unveiling an interactive showcase of Gatorade’s latest innovation. Gatorade’s brand promise is to serve today’s evolved athlete by combining new data about performance, nutrition and biomechanics – and Fuel Lab certainly brought that to life. Now that we have packed up SX, we are hitting the road to bring the Lab to locations across the US, starting with The Big Apple on March 30th!

And to top it off, yesterday, CNBC posted a story that the Fuel Lab was one of the best brand experiences at SX! And there were a LOT of great experiences to choose from so we are all very honored. Here is what they had to say:

Gatorade

Gatorade transported SXSW attendees inside its Gatorade Fuel Lab, a real facility in Barrington, Illinois, where athletes and Gatorade scientists work together to create the ideal sports drink formula. People were invited to custom make their own Gatorade using “sports fuel” pods that just need to be added to water.

“Gatorade is an innovation company and we wanted to make a huge statement,” Xavi Cortadellas, senior director of innovation and design at Gatorade. “The whole idea is delivering sports fuel personalization.”

Gatorade hopes that eventually consumers can go online and find which “sports fuel” fits them best. Then choose the formula based on the type of activity they do and the weather they are experiencing. The pods are also easier to ship than bottles of Gatorade, which fits today’s digital consumer-led lifestyle.

“Consumers want personalization and technology in everything they are doing,” said Cortadellas.

The Fuel Lab activation now goes on tour to visit high school elite athletes at the following stops:
March 30 – March 31: New York (Grand Hyatt)
May 27 – May 30: Philadelphia
June 16 – June 19: Chicago (Navy Pier)
July 19 – July 27: Las Vegas
August 5 – August 7: Los Angeles

Digital Summit Atlanta, a gathering of some of the most forward thinkers in digital marketing, took place this week and I was proud to make it my 3rd time in attendance. Each year I have been able to discover new topics and discuss the next trends in digital marketing.

Overall, each year has followed its own theme as digital marketing as a whole evolves so quickly. In 2013, trends in how social media was changing for brands was explored in a lot of sessions. Last year it shifted to a major focus on content marketing and SEO. Now, at #DSUM15, the next stage in UX (User Experience) design seemed to be the key focus.

And with that, here are three key takeaways from the conference as it can relate to what we do in the experiential space…

1. Humanizing UX

Many of the sessions at Digital Summit really focused on UX as we were challenged to think of what was next in the field. For example, how do we run UX more lean and understand better, powered with ‘big data’, how to humanize someone’s digital experience. When we map out the consumer journey – remember that each user is an actual person with problems and needs.

When you look at bring a consumer through a brand experience for experiential this line of thinking makes a lot of sense, right? It is our expertise to bring brands to life in a way that they can interact with consumers as people and not anonymous IP addresses. However many activation designs we see in the field could do a better job from at the ideation stage to keep in mind that once launched, these are people with their own objectives who will walk through our ideas.

So when thinking through your consumer experience idea, map it out. Literally draw out each stage of the activation UX and use this tool to identify where the gaps are or more importantly, where it can be more streamlined.

2. Millennials are mobile-first…and are starting to earn a lot of money

When you hear the word “millennials” – how old of a person pops in your mind? Probably an early-20-something with new student debt maybe? Well consider that millennials are were born starting in 1980 and now are entering their mid-30s. Sure there is probably a healthy amount of debt still lingering – but this generation is now entering over a $Trillion in buying power and loves to spend.

So with all of this data we now have on the ‘Connected Generation’ – what have we learned about marketing to them? It’s a long answer but here are two quick tips from @annieg from StumbleUpon.

First, “6 is the new 60” – as in the 6” phone is more important than the 60” TV. Now that doesn’t mean the generation is consumer less video – in fact it’s more than ever. But reportedly 33% do not watch any broadcast TV.

Second, it seems obvious that millennials are connected to their mobile devices, sure, but how many experiences are being built mobile-first? When we consider social, if you stop to think why they are so effective with the connected generation it’s not just because they are social – but because the most popular experiences are mobile-first. Snapchat, Instagram, Vine…some of the most powerful platforms for the younger Millennials have excelled by being native to the 6” screen. So consider mobile-first experiences to connect and make an engagement that this group wants to use. After all, it is why the younger Millennials are now being known as Social Natives.

3. The Entrepreneur Wants to Solve a Problem

I heard a great line this year and it came during a keynote speaker Chris Brogan, whose content I highly recommend. To summarize:

Stop chasing innovation, which aims to just do something.

Be an entrepreneur, which aims to solve someone’s problem.

While this is absolutely a trap in creating the latest in digital experiences, it is also a trap in experiential marketing. Brands and agencies alike all want to innovate and create and truly great new things are activated in our space every year. But when coming up the ideas for the experience on the front end, don’t just try to chase an innovation for the sake of doing it. Instead, identify an audience’s problem and solve it. That is where the entrepreneurship mindset excels and where experiential marketing can truly make an in-person impact on someone.

If you are ever free in May, I highly recommend Digital Summit. This is only a small snipet of content from the 2-day conference. I still have to go through pages upon pages of notes but in the meantime, enjoy the learnings and feel free to find me @BradMEpstein if you want to go through my timeline where I shared some more real-time leanrings!

Bonus! PowerPoint is where data goes to die!

If you work with data (you should!) treat it as a living, breathing source. PowerPoint it becomes static and if 2015 taught me anything – is that static is kryptonite for the modern marketer. So learn new tools that keep you agile and keep your brand’s marketing velocity as fast as possible.